The sheds and barn were robust-looking constructions. The barn was built of some kind of metal and on the door were two hefty chains and huge padlocks. She was really scared now; she could hear her own heart pounding and her stomach was churning. Martin held her tightly while Del unlocked the barn door.

'Please tell me what this is all about,' she pleaded with them. 'I haven't done anything to you. Why should you want to hurt me? Where is Dan? Why are you doing this?'

'Shut up, can't you?' Del said as he opened the big door, then grabbed her right arm again. The barn was empty but for a couple of bales of straw, and she dug her heels in, refusing to walk until they told her what was going on.

They looked rattled, but they just caught her arms and dragged her across the straw-strewn floor towards what looked like a kind of big cage. 'This is where you'll stay until the boss decides what's got to be done with you,' Del informed her, and opening the door to it, pushed her through and locked it. 'Shout all you like, there's no one around to hear you. We'll be back later.'

'Don't go yet,' she pleaded with them, going up to the bars and holding on to them because her legs felt as if they would give way. 'Just tell me why. What have I done?' she asked, and tears ran down her cheeks.

She saw no sympathy in Del's face, just the desire to get back in the car and go. But Martin looked uncomfortable.

'There's some water and a blanket.' He pointed to the corner of the cage.

'Don't do this,' she cried out. 'My parents will lean on the police once they know I'm missing. I work for a solicitor, I'm not someone that can just vanish without anyone worrying!'

'You talk too much,' Del replied, looking at her dispa.s.sionately. 'Come on, Mart. Let's go.'

She screamed then, so loud she felt she could be heard for miles around. But it made no difference to them. They walked off, slamming the barn door behind them, and she heard the clank of the chain as they locked the padlock.

A few seconds later she heard the car drive off.

She didn't scream any more, she knew only too well there was no one to hear, and if she kept quiet, if someone did come by she'd hear them. But she couldn't stop herself crying, or cursing herself for the stupidity of getting into a car with people she didn't know.

By ten o'clock Fifi had gone right round the cage inspecting it, but found no weak spot in the bars or any implement which might help to free her. She thought the cage had been made for securing valuable merchandise, perhaps spirits, in a warehouse. It was constructed of steel, with a slightly raised wooden floor, and far too tough to break or bend. It was some ten feet square, and there were track marks to it from the barn door, which suggested a forklift had been used to place it here. It couldn't have been here long either, for there were no spider's webs or dust on it.

She had nothing remotely useful in her handbag; she'd already tried to pick the padlock with her nail file and the end had broken off. She didn't even have a book or a newspaper to pa.s.s the time with.

The barn was very big, taller than a double-decker bus, and gloomy because the only light came from horizontal narrow windows right up by the roof. There was enough s.p.a.ce for dozens of tractors or other farm machinery, but the absence of anything, even rubbish, suggested it had been cleared out fairly recently and hadn't been used for anything since.

The mattress and the blanket on it were in good condition, dry to the touch and clean-smelling, as if they had only recently been brought here from someone's home. That at least suggested that whoever was behind her abduction wasn't entirely inhuman, but it might also mean he was intending to keep her here for some time.

Fifi sat down on the mattress and tried to think how long it would be before someone got anxious about her. At the office they wouldn't do anything. They couldn't phone her home, and as they didn't know Dan had left her, there was no reason why they'd find her absence anything more than irritating. Frank would wonder where she was when she didn't come home tonight, but it would be a couple of days before he found it worrying. Miss Diamond would be the same.

All Fifi could hope for was that Dan would get the letter she sent and go round to the flat. But he'd most likely think that she'd gone out straight from work with one of the girls from the office. Would he wait for her to come home? And if he did, might he think she was spending the night with another man?

Frank might tell him about the men calling this morning! He'd smell a rat at that, surely?

She sighed deeply as she realized they had almost certainly lied about that. If they meant her harm they wouldn't have presented themselves to a neighbour who could later identify them. They'd probably just waited in their car at the end of the road until they saw her.

However she looked at it, no one was going to be worried about her for at least two days, possibly longer. And even then, how would anyone find her? How would they know where to even start looking?

Yvette's warning kept reverberating in her head, and she had no doubt that this had something to do with her going to the police on Sat.u.r.day. But how did they find out? And how did they know Dan hadn't been with her all weekend?

She mentally collated all the sc.r.a.ps of information she'd collected over the past weeks, and she realized that someone at Dan's work must be connected to Alfie and his card games. It was probably he who set up the attack in the alley, tipping off Alfie about what time Dan would be leaving the site. And when Dan said he'd walked out on her, this same man saw a golden opportunity to grab her.

But there were dozens of men working on the building site any one of them could be one of Alfie Muckle's relatives or cronies. She wondered if Dan had ever talked about how she was always going on about the murder, or how she watched out of the window? She couldn't imagine him doing so, but maybe if he was growing irritated with her he had to let off steam?

But why s.n.a.t.c.h her? What possible use could she be to them? She'd already told everything she knew to the police!

As the morning slowly ticked by, Fifi became more and more frantic. People didn't get s.n.a.t.c.hed or abducted for no reason, it was either to shut them up or to hold them to ransom. The latter seemed unlikely in her case; people in the street knew she was more or less estranged from her family, and they weren't rich anyway. Therefore the reason for her being here must be to shut her up.

She had to suppose John Bolton was killed because he knew too much. But what did they think she knew? Did they think she'd seen something more from her window?

Dan had often talked about the police tipping the wink to villains who had paid them. Could it be that the man in the Jaguar had been told she'd recognized him as one of the men who played cards at Alfie's?

That had to be it. Perhaps he was afraid she'd be called upon to pick him out in an ident.i.ty parade.

Whatever their reasons for wanting her, there was a cold certainty about the way it would end. They'd have to kill her, for she could identify the men who had brought her here.

Just the thought of that brought her out in a cold sweat, and her heart beat faster. She wished to G.o.d she'd never gone to that council depot.

Chapter fifteen.

Frank was washing up his supper things when he saw Dan come in through the front door. 'h.e.l.lo, Dan,' he called out. 'First sighting of you in days. Been doing overtime?'

As Frank spoke, he left the kitchen and went down the hall towards Dan. He saw that the lad didn't look his usual glowing self. He was positively gaunt, with dark circles beneath his eyes.

'Yeah, overtime,' Dan replied, but he didn't look directly at Frank. 'Must go, things to do.'

Disappointed that Dan didn't want to chat, and a little concerned at his appearance, Frank watched him walk up the stairs, noting that he wasn't in his work clothes. Could he have lost his job and didn't want to admit it?

It was after seven and Frank hadn't seen or heard Fifi come in from work yet. She'd been behaving a bit oddly too; she hadn't gone out once at the weekend, and last night when he spoke to her about John Bolton, she barely responded.

'Maybe they're having a bad time,' he thought, going back into his kitchen to finish clearing up.

He was watching 'Z' Cars 'Z' Cars later, when there was a knock on his living-room door. 'Come in,' he called out, knowing it was Dan by the sound of his footsteps on the hall lino. later, when there was a knock on his living-room door. 'Come in,' he called out, knowing it was Dan by the sound of his footsteps on the hall lino.

'Sorry to disturb you, Frank,' Dan said, putting his head around the door. 'Fifi's not back yet. Did she tell you if she was going somewhere this evening?'

'No, she didn't,' Frank said. 'Come in, son, and shut the door. Didn't she leave you anything for your tea?'

'I'm not worried about that,' Dan said, coming in hesitantly. 'I just expected her to be here, that's all.'

Frank could see the lad was troubled. His eyes were dull and he had a slump to his shoulders. 'You two had a row?' Frank asked, seeing no point in being anything but direct.

Dan nodded miserably. 'I walked out on Sat.u.r.day,' he admitted. 'I was so mad with her it seemed the only thing to do. I got a letter from her this morning at the site though, saying she wanted to make it up. But then I expect you know all this?'

Frank was deeply shocked. 'No, I didn't know. Fifi hasn't said a word to me,' he said. 'But it explains why everything was so quiet over the weekend. Now, don't worry about her not being here, she probably didn't expect you to come round immediately. She likely went off for a coffee and a chat after work with one of the office girls. Women do that when they're upset.'

'But she might have known I'd come straight here after I got the letter,' Dan said, his voice cracking as if struggling with his emotions.

Frank sensed Dan was close to breaking down. He looked as if he hadn't eaten or slept in days, so he told him to sit down and poured him a brandy.

'I'm going to make you something to eat,' he said firmly. 'You look all in, so you'd best have a bath and get into bed. She'll be home soon, and as I remember with June, the best way to make up is with a cuddle.'

An hour later, Frank was back in his chair watching television. He'd made Dan a quick meal of tinned stewed steak, peas and boiled potatoes, then packed him off for a bath. But it was after nine now, and Fifi still wasn't home. He couldn't help but be a bit worried himself as Fifi had often said she didn't like going out after dark without Dan. It also seemed unlikely that a coffee or cup of tea after work with someone from the office would turn into a night out.

Dan had told him what the row had been about, and said he had really thought Fifi would have a better life without him.

Frank had always been of the opinion that Fifi was like a fish out of water around here. Losing her baby, and then the trauma of Angela's death, was enough to shake the most solid of marriages. But whatever Fifi's parents thought of Dan, he was a decent, hardworking lad, and just to be with them both was to see how much they loved each other. So he gave Dan a little pep talk about all marriages having their sticky patches, and told him that he and June had blazing rows in the first couple of years they were married. 'But it's a mistake to walk out,' he informed Dan. 'You see, that leaves it all up in the air, even when you do come back and apologize. So the next time you have words, you drag all the old stuff out too. What you've got to do is talk it through properly. Fifi's been through a lot lately, you have to make allowances for that.'

They moved on to talk about other things after that and Frank told Dan about John Bolton.

'Jesus!' Dan exclaimed, his face blanching. 'That will have sent her right round the twist. No wonder she's not in, she probably thinks they'll be coming for her next.'

Frank had thought that was a daft remark at the time, but now he was sitting here on his own, his ears c.o.c.ked for the sound of Fifi's key in the door, it didn't seem quite so ridiculous. People were saying that John had been killed because he knew too much about what went on at number 11. Fifi could have been spooked by that after all, she was to be a key witness at Alfie's trial. He wondered if he ought to go upstairs and suggest Dan ring her parents in Bristol to see if she'd gone there.

'No, that'll just alarm him,' he murmured to himself. 'And Fifi wouldn't want her parents to know she and Dan were having problems.'

The darkness seemed to press in on Fifi as she lay huddled up under the blanket. She'd been doing all right until it got dark; after a spell of crying and feeling panicky and sorry for herself, she'd forced herself to climb the bars of the cage for some exercise. She felt quite proud of herself for having managed to swing hand over hand right along the top of the cage like a monkey, and she even did handstands to pa.s.s the time.

The exercise had made her more focused about all this too. She'd lain on the mattress, staring up at the rain on the barn window high above her, and carefully a.n.a.lysed everything she knew.

The police had never revealed any uncertainty about whether Alfie or Molly did actually kill Angela, that story had come from Johnny Milkins. Yet judging by the way they hauled in Frank and Stan, it looked as if they weren't totally convinced that the killing was down to the Muckles. Yvette's horror at Fifi playing amateur detective and her references to bad men suggested she knew something she hadn't disclosed. And just the way she spoke of it hinted that she wasn't talking only about the events of that last card game, but something which had been going on for some time.

The hideous idea that had formed in the back of Fifi's mind after speaking to Yvette on Sat.u.r.day hadn't been fully erased, only put aside because of other events. But now John Bolton was dead, and she'd been abducted, it didn't look so far-fetched.

Had Alfie been allowing his card-playing friends to have s.e.x with his daughters?

She had always wondered what possible attraction there could be for anyone spending Friday nights at number 11. In the past there had been screams, fights, loud music and raucous laughter. Weren't men who played cards for high stakes supposed to sit round a table in virtual silence?

Now she had aired that blackest of suggestions in her mind, the more she thought about it, the more certain she became.

Molly was a blackmailing s.l.u.t, who neglected her children and allowed them to be physically abused. Alfie was completely amoral; rumour had it he'd given his older daughters children. She felt the couple were quite capable of selling or lending out their children for s.e.x.

If it had been Alfie who raped and killed Angela, there would have been no reason for anyone else there on the Friday night to have been too frightened to come forward, for she wasn't killed until Sat.u.r.day morning. In fact the vast majority of men, whatever their walk of life, would put aside all hard-held taboos about not gra.s.sing up a mate at such a heinous crime.

Yet if Angela had been pa.s.sed around, and perhaps the two other Muckle girls as well, all the men were in it together, and they would be linked by an unholy bond. The ones who sat by and let it happen were as guilty as those who took part. So they'd all stick together, no one daring to break ranks. Fifi felt certain this was what had happened, but perhaps Angela was so traumatized by it that they feared she'd tell. So Alfie or Molly smothered her.

Fifi could only guess what happened after she'd been to the police with her information. Maybe they went straight to John Bolton to demand the name of the man she'd seen him with. They could have gone to the council depot and asked questions there, but either way she had no doubt it must have got back to the man with the Jaguar.

It had always seemed odd that Alfie hadn't named names, but was this only fear of reprisals? Perhaps he trusted the top man to find a way to get him off the hook for keeping his silence? Was that why Stan was put in the frame?

One thing was certain: if the Jaguar man was a villain, he was a powerful one if he could get John Bolton killed at a click of his fingers. She wondered why he hadn't got someone to make sure Alfie met with a fatal accident while in prison, as that would have been the surest way to keep his silence. And who would care? Everyone had always wanted him to be guilty and permanently out the way. But then there was Molly too! Fifi supposed two fatal accidents weren't feasible.

Working it all out in her mind did help stop Fifi from dwelling on what was going to become of her. But once daylight began to fail, and the men still didn't come back, she just fell apart.

It was so eerie and menacing in the dark. The wind was whistling around the barn, the rain drumming on the roof, and over and above that there were squeaking and rustling sounds which could only be mice or rats. She was so scared she felt she might die of fright.

Her stomach was rumbling with hunger, even though she doubted she could eat when she was so scared. She didn't dare try to sleep in case a rat ran over her. What if the men never came back? Suppose she just got weaker and weaker from hunger and thirst until she died?

It was like something from a film or a book. But people who got locked up like that always found some means of escape. She'd been over every inch of the cage, however, and there was no way out except through the door, and that was padlocked. They hadn't even left her a bucket as a toilet like they did in films; she'd had to pee in the corner of the cage and she couldn't bear the thought of how it would be when she wanted to do something more than pee.

And she couldn't wash or clean her teeth either. How could anyone do this to her?

Her anger became as strong as her fear. She hadn't done anything bad to anyone; she only went in to the Muckles' house because she was worried about Angela. She went to that depot to try to help Stan. Dan left her because she lied about what her mother said in that letter and she only did that to spare his feelings.

If she ever did get out of here, she'd make sure she looked the other way if she ever saw someone hurt or in trouble again.

Self-pity overwhelmed her, tears running down her face as she thought of the way her mother used to nag and criticize her. It was all Clara's fault; if she hadn't been so nasty about Dan they wouldn't have rushed into getting married. They wouldn't have ended up in Dale Street, and Fifi would never have known that there were people like the Muckles.

She blamed her father too. He should've stood up for her. All he did was bury his nose in the newspaper when her mother was ranting at her. He'd said he was sorry when she lost the baby, but those were just empty words if he didn't back them up with actions. Obviously he didn't love her and was glad she was out of his hair.

Then there were all those so-called friends back in Bristol! Most of them she'd known since she was a child; they'd come to play with her, stayed to tea, even spent the night. Granted, she'd neglected them when she met Dan, but they'd done the same thing to her at times when they'd met a new man.

Why did they come round to the flat drunk that night if it wasn't just to sneer at her? Not a present, a card or even congratulations! Fine friends they turned out to be!

A sound outside stopped her silent angry tirade short. She could hear a car and see a c.h.i.n.k of light through the barn door, which had to be headlights.

Was it the men bringing her food? Or someone else?

She screamed at the top of her voice, hoping it was the latter.

'Shut that racket,' a male voice boomed out in the darkness, and a torch was switched on.

Fifi blinked in the bright light, unable to make out who was behind it. But as it came closer, she saw that it was Del and Martin again, and they were supporting someone between them.

As they came closer, she realized by the clothes that the third person was a woman, and her head was slumped forward as if she were unconscious. 'Isn't one prisoner enough for you?' Fifi said sarcastically. 'What's she done to you?'

'Shut up or you'll get nothing to eat,' Del said sharply, and leaving Martin to hold the woman up, he came forward to unlock the cage door. 'Get over to the other side,' he ordered curtly, the beam of his torch sweeping round the cage.

As he turned to beckon Martin to bring the woman over, the torchlight pa.s.sed across her face. Fifi was so stunned to see who it was that she remained rooted to the spot.

'Yvette!' she gasped.

'Get back,' Del warned her.

He came through the cage door backwards, holding Yvette under her arms and dragging her. Dumping her on the floor like a sack of potatoes, he left the cage immediately and locked the door behind him.

Fifi knelt down by Yvette. There was blood running down her cheek and she was out cold.

'What have you done to her?' she asked, looking to Martin who was standing watching her, the torch in his hand. 'Yvette wouldn't harm a fly, why hurt her?'

'She's not hurt, she's just had some knockout stuff to stop her screaming. She'll be fine when she wakes up,' he replied, his tone almost apologetic. 'Look, we brought you some food. And some more water too,' he added, pulling a bag out of his coat pocket.

Fifi didn't know whether she was more or less frightened by Yvette being brought here too. But she knew she had to hide her fear and try to make some sort of impact on these men.

'Why have you brought her here?' she asked more boldly than she felt. 'Are you going to bring in everyone from Dale Street? If you do, you might need a bigger cage.'

She was disadvantaged in every way they were in shadow, whereas she was caught full on in the beam of the torch, and she knew she must look awful with her face blotchy from crying, and her skirt and blouse all creased up. Under the circ.u.mstances her appearance wasn't going to make a sc.r.a.p of difference to how they treated her, but if she couldn't look good, she was at least going to have a stab at making herself memorable.

'Don't try and be funny,' Del said.